By TKG’s Roxanne Dehnad
The Kinetix Group counts healthcare leaders, providers and officials as Key Advisors in our Expert Network. With experience in an array of fields and specialized knowledge that helps us achieve our goals, we’ll highlight them periodically to showcase their expertise.
One of our Key Advisors is John J. Walker, MD, CPE. Dr. Walker is a gastroenterologist by training and while in active practice was named by his peers as one of the “Best Doctors in America.” He eventually transitioned to a role as a physician executive and became Cornerstone Health Care’s first Chief Medical Officer in January 2010. During this time, he was responsible for implementing Cornerstone’s quality program, development of its clinical service lines, and its infrastructure to accomplish the move from fee-for-service to pay-for-value.
While working with The Kinetix Group team, Dr. Walker has shared insight in the development of new models of care, new processes to improve care delivery, and provided information on the potential benefit of programs in development for life science and health systems. Recently Dr. Walker has focused on helping systems move toward the Triple Aim. Those initiatives are complemented by his experience implementing Cornerstone’s Patient Care Advocate program, a population health initiative that initially focused on diabetes care and was associated with a 33 percent reduction in high-risk diabetic patients in one year. He also started the group’s patient satisfaction program, PEAK (Patient Expectations Are Key), that lead to an improvement in patient satisfaction from the 76th percentile to the 90th percentile over 18 months. As an example of impact, in the second year of its ACO, the programs that Cornerstone implemented saved Medicare approximately $5 million.
So far Dr. Walker’s initiatives with The Kinetix Group have included oncology models, a heart failure initiative and patient engagement projects.